


Lightning in a Bottle

by Archaic_Nepenthes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Murder, No Major Character Death, Pre-Established Relationship, cop and criminal couple, dark romance with comedy sprinkled in, sanity is a spectrum, without honesty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26209471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archaic_Nepenthes/pseuds/Archaic_Nepenthes
Summary: Tom is a criminal. Harry is a cop. But somehow Tom makes it work, and he and Harry are both happy... so long as Harry stays blissfully ignorant.Because Harry is a good person and Tom isn’t, and Harry loves good people but Tom loves him and Tom can only be good to Harry.Tom will do anything to keep Harry from finding out.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, and other minor side pairings
Comments: 11
Kudos: 91
Collections: Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020





	Lightning in a Bottle

**Author's Note:**

> My first published work written for Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020. Much thanks to [Okunichh’s](http://okunichh.tumblr.com/) [gorgeous art prompt that inspired this story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254498). I would have never thought this up without it. Happy reading!

“Let me tell you his favorite line,” Harry barely contains a smile enough to say it. He clears his throat, one green eye widening to comical proportions as he screws the other one shut.

“ _Now ye listen here, Potter._ ” Harry lowers his voice to a conspiratorial growl, leaning forward with a crazed look. “ _Alibis are slabs of swiss cheese. They smell funny and are full of holes… Keep poking till you finger a gap._ ” Harry wiggles his finger indecently.

Tom, unable to keep a straight face, bursts out laughing, with Harry following right behind. It’s a minute before either can speak again.

“So now,” Harry continues, “He just whispers, ‘ _Swiss cheese, Harry, find the cheese,_ ’ right in front of suspects I’m questioning. I can barely get a word in without cracking up.”

Tom raises his glass to his lips, if only to give his dimples a break from smiling so much—his longest authentic smile to date. Harry just keeps helping him break his previous records.

“MadEye certainly lives up to his name.” Tom manages, still chuckling.

“He lives _for it_ more like. I’m beginning to think he actually enjoys his reputation. He’s too barking mad not to be choosing to, just to seem more intimidating.” Harry shakes his head, incredulous.

“Or,” Tom starts innocently, “he’s just that _Moody_ ,” earning them both another round of laughter.

Merlin, he’s knackered.

It shouldn’t be that funny—being as corny as it is. But after four glasses of wine, the easiness of being with Harry, and post-adrenaline from getting away with murder, Tom can excuse himself for entertaining sillier humor.

Tom pauses a beat to breathe, “Is that really his way of explaining interrogation tactics to the trainees?”

“That’s not even the half of it.” Harry swallows another mouthful of parmesan chicken before numbering them off his fingers.

“There’s— _constant vigilance, CONSTANT_ —and— _Break eye contact and I’ll break off your leg_ —Oh and— _Everyone’s a liar… the ones we catch are just the lazy buggers who never bothered to learn how._ ”

Tom quite likes that last one.

“He must be the world’s most quotable man.” Tom leans forward and picks his fork up again.

“That’s what I was saying to Ron and Hermione,” Harry says, looking equal parts perplexed and amused. “He’s unorthodox and a decade overdue for retirement… but he makes the CID-Programme interesting.”

Moody would be orthodox enough once he stops jokingly threatening to steal his trainees’ legs to replace his prosthetic one. But by the way Harry describes him, eyeing up shoe size and their owner’s height, Moody might be half serious.

“And how are those friends of yours?” Tom asks, because it’s polite, and they’re Harry’s friends… whom Tom doesn’t give a shit about beyond mild interest for what Harry gets up to with them.

“Hermione’s firm is overloaded with environmental cases, so she’s deliriously happy.” Harry starts polishing off his dessert. “Ron’s gotten lucky and landed Tonks for his supervisor. He was worried a little at first about what color he’d get, but apparently he gets a pass for his naturally red hair.”

It’s Tom’s luck Harry didn’t. That neon hair gave Tom a headache the few times he saw her when invited to the Burrow—the Weasleys’ architectural nightmare for a residence—with Harry for several holidays last year. And according to Harry, her recruits are known for recoloring their hair as some sort of initiation— _hazing_ —right. Who knows what Godawful hair color Harry would have returned with.

Though, Harry’s mother had red hair which may go well with his eyes. It could look quite good on him actually...

Said eyes brighten at Tom suddenly. “I forgot to ask. How about you? How was your workday?”

“My work?” Tom chews thoughtfully, taking his time; Harry’s cooking is delicious as ever. “The usual. Nothing as eventful as yours.”

Nothing Harry could stomach that is.

“Try me.” Harry glances at him hopefully, expression open with curiosity. “Find any lost treasures in the Malfoys’ secret vaults?” Harrys obsession with the Malfoy’s illegally harboring national treasures is both funny and exactly on the mark.

“If I did, that would be confidential,” Tom reminds, relisting his activities from the day before. “But I’m afraid not. I added a listing for a recently acquired sculpture to the Antiquities collection, polished and reboxed some mid-18th century watches, and retraced a set of amethyst rings from the late Renaissance on auction to Canada before things got too muddy from there.” He can go on but ends it there with another poignant bite out of Harry’s amazing cooking.

“Practically the same as yesterday,” Harry mutters, quickly losing interest. His gaze fills with sympathy, as if imagining having to suffer through something so monotonous himself. “Curating priceless artifacts is surprisingly dull.”

It would if it were all that Tom does. But tending to artifacts and entering their information into an organized system is a nice breather between being a burglar for hire and a killer by nature. Besides, it pays better to work under a private collector than being a policeman.

“That’s what I have you for.” He smirks at Harry. “I shall be entertained vicariously through you, Detective Constable.”

“ _Trainee Det_ Con,” Harry corrects, but grins back. After two years’ experience as an officer, Harry needs another two in CID training formally, irregardless that he’s more qualified than half of the detectives of London in Tom’s eyes.

So Tom dismisses the correction. “On the way to be is all the same to me.”

Harry grins, spearing the last bite of treacle tart on his plate. And Tom is already passing Harry the rest of his mostly untouched dessert, earning him another of Harry’s surprised, “Thanks” and appreciative smiles. Harry, whose body can eat twice its weight and still not gain a pound, needs it more than Tom, who is less into sweets anyway.

As Harry digs in, a little more bashfully as Tom openly watches, Tom catches sight of a white edge of cotton gauze on his forehead, peeking beneath his long black fringe. And all the good will from the drink and food, wanes quickly. Not everything is perfect as it should be like it was just over a week ago.

Harry’s head, treated and bandaged by St. Mungo’s best, is still healing from the incident. But his mind has moved well past the event that two weeks later is still haunting Tom.

Because Tom can’t get over something of his—Harry—almost being _taken_.

Harry was attacked— _crumpled like a puppet whose strings were cut and bleeding unresponsively on the floor when he’d just been standing, laughing with Tom a minute ago_ —and Tom can’t forget, let alone forgive.

There’s no one left to. Tom made sure of it.

A much darker sense of satisfaction washes over him, a lot like accomplishment. The scene of blood and feeble grunting and begging overlays the mute one of Harry prone on the floor and bleeding from his head. Focusing on the attackers mangled body, the broken to bits green glass bottle—a similar comforting color to Harry’s eyes—Tom can breathe more evenly. He took out the trash after all.

It would never be a threat again.

Only this thought quells Tom’s gorge of deeper running anger. Harry, contently preoccupied with his second helping now, hardly notices Tom’s sharpened gaze relaxing. It’s better that way.

  
Sooner than later, dinner is over and it’s time for bed.

By then, Tom can’t wait any longer.

“Let me look at it,” Tom moves to push back Harry’s hair out of the way to do just that.

Harry’s tired expressions shifts into tired-and-confused as if he’s just remembered he’s been injured at all, a precarious mindset to have.

Harry hesitates. “It’s fine.” Then huffs when Tom doesn’t move away, “It hasn’t changed since you last checked it,” brushing off Tom’s reaching hand.

But Tom insists. “Civilized people don’t wait to change a bandage after it’s partially glued into their healed skin.”

Harry scoffs, “You just changed it this morning,” and frowning adds “And that was just the _once_.”

Harry isn’t lazy with most things, but as much as he gets worked up over his loved ones state of life and happiness, he habitually neglects more sophisticated practices of his own self care, covering only the basics and sometimes not even that. At some point this strangely endearing quality also becomes maddening.

“And I’ll see to it that it won’t happen _again_.”

Begrudgingly, Harry lets him peel off the bandage, inspect his stitches for signs of infection, and reapply the ointment and antibiotics while Harry hisses a little even when Tom’s fingers barely apply any pressure at all. Tom approaches him with the same care he would any priceless art piece. Harry likes to say it’s the intensity of Tom’s stare that bothers him, the nitpicking and-preoccupation with the treatment of his spectrum of minor to major injuries, but Tom knows otherwise.

Tom never misses the way Harry will melt into his touches and softer attention he’s given. Harry not so secretly looks forward to it. And so does Tom. They both play this little game where they never say how transparent the other is when it comes to their vast extent of enjoying the other.

Harry avoids it because it’s something that makes him relax and feel cared for in a way he typically can’t allow himself to fully enjoy without a dose of anxiety. As if after-all this time, he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Tom isn’t letting it.

“How do you suppose you’d take care of yourself without my daily reminders?” Tom asks, watching Harry’s half lidded eyes with a smirk. They slowly open enough to look back up at Tom with the wry grin Tom has come to know all too well.

“That’s what I have _you_ for.” Harry throws the words back at him, before loosely resting his arms around Tom’s waist.

It’s one of Tom’s favorite things, Harry acting as his balance and imperfect mirror, his own words bouncing off of Harry back at him in Harry’s voice. Proof Tom’s inside his head.

More than some wound left by the deceased.

The injury is smaller in width then the amount it bled after it was inflicted has led Tom to believe. Somehow the broken glass bottle that burst against Harry’s forehead shattered and dragged in such a way it has cut a neat, jagged line in Harry’s skin. The tiny superficial scratches surrounding it will heal with little to no scarring, but the deeper angry red line, zigzagged under seven stitches, likely won’t.

It will become a permanent brand on Harry’s face Tom will always see.

Tom does the rest of the bandage redressing on autopilot. The past two weeks rerun like a dream sequence: starting out well and ending in abrupt disaster, unreal and uncontrollable, and appearing more and more disjointed as it nears the end.

_Walking with Harry out the pub, Harry’s idea for a night out. A little tipsy. A little frisky. Its harmony, just laughing together… A shattering noise and Harry’s alarmed shout of warning… couldn’t prepare him for—Harry stepping in front of him and into the downward swing of an upended broken bottle as sharp as any blade. Glass hitting Harry’s head and Harry falling face first to the ground with blood pooling out his forehead on the pavement._

_Harry’s eyes gone from open and green to_ _closed and coated in red._  
_The always whisper turned scream_  
_K I L L_

_The attacker dropping the bottle and fleeing like a monster is on his heels, Tom’s rage is ready to, but Harry—Harry is the priority. Call the Phone. Ringing the Ambulance. Waiting. Too much waiting. Sirens. The visit to the hospital. “He has a concussion.” Harry’s dry blood all over Tom’s hands—that green bottle. The thing that hurt Harry. Where is it? Ah good yes. Packed in the bag. To be returned it to its owner._

_Because Harry saved him and almost died for it._  
_Tom can’t lose him, Tom can’t afford to—Too Much waiting—How long until he knows how Harry is._  
_Tom wants Harry. He needs him now._  
_More than ever as he’s possibly losing him, and realizing just how priceless he is._

_How much longer._

_Harry protects him. No one else. Harry did._  
_Tom can give as good as he gets, and he wants to, for Harry. And what is the wound worth?_

**“- _He’ll be alright. We patched him up with seven stitches…_ ”**

_Seven stabs for seven stitches. The answer for a fair exchange. The number he agreed on when he went out yesterday after finding the man. And Tom’s conviction stuck. No more, no less._  
_After 12 days searching._

_Waiting and waiting for the man to come by._  
_Finally, finally he sees him. Anger rearing. Patience. Around the corner. Follow him down into a dark alley. Like the same one he attacked Harry in. Asking ‘Remember this?’ hidden in the dark._  
_He will for his last night on earth._

_He steps out of the shadows, the other man’s abandoned remains of the green bottle gripped purposefully in hand._

_The bottle’s owner runs after that—but in vain. It’s a good thing he’s a runner. Had he gone to jail, Tom wouldn’t get to kill him._  
_Perhaps, this is divine punishment,_  
_In a seven timed tempo._

He’s been living in a trance that doesn’t end until after Tom has come back freshly cleaned from the debris of a dead body to Harry, here and now, who is very much alive and breathing and in Tom’s arms where he always should be, just a little more scarred now.

But Tom can fix it, reworking the meaning of the scar to both of them as a physical sign of Tom’s worth to Harry and Harry’s to Tom. Whatever final form the injury takes, it’s already a symbol of Harry’s sacrifice, of his attachment to Tom, and Tom’s newly re-strengthened devotion to Harry in turn to keep Harry safe. And Tom will pay it its due.

He kisses it softly, searing his touch into it like some sort’ve prayer of reclamation. A reminder he’s taken care of the threat. And Harry is no longer immediately endangered, however much he logically knows real life’s dangers never end.

“I’m ok.” Harry misinterprets the action as merely concern. It’s so much more than that. Tom kisses it again in lieu of an response and feels the laugh jumping against his mouth as much as he hears it.

“That’s not very hygienic,” Harry mumbles without real complaint, mostly to be contrary. Tom doesn’t bother arguing that his mouth is one of the cleanest places Harry’s been, and he hasn’t complained before.

Humming lightly in response, his fingers press the new bandage in place with a tad more pressure than necessary and smirks when Harry gives him a dirty look and sharper inhale in return.

“Alright, off to bed.” Tom shoos him toward theirs, but it seems Harry has other plans. Tom’s touch on Harry has clearly not lost its effect, a wonderful sign of absent nerve damage.

“I have something else you can examine,” Harry’s voice goes low and sultry, just the way Tom likes.

He raises his eyebrows but Harry’s raises his own right back, donning that specific rebellious look that sets Tom’s dominating instincts on fire. That, and Harry is wearing his mark of self-sacrifice for Tom just beneath a thin layer of cotton Tom put there.

It’s one of Harry’s new tactics, sex as appeasement, reward, or distraction; taking after Tom’s own strategy with Harry. Which doesn’t displease Tom, just the opposite. It achieves its purpose.

Tom is too hungry suddenly to smile. “ _Show me._ ”

Tom takes Harry to bed in more ways than one, where Harry all but proclaims worship for his immaculate mouth.

After a greatly satisfying round, he presses himself deeper against Harry’s side, wrapped around him and picturing their skin melding. The dark thing inside Tom curls up and goes to rest, only at times like these when he is alone or with Harry. It makes him hum softly and lowly without a tune, a strange habit when he’s completely relaxed he’s kept to himself all these years with Harry as the only other person to witness it.

Oddly enough, it happens less when Harry’s around. He’s no way of explaining the small noises beyond that the vocal vibrations in his chest settle something that always feels loose, a self-soothing gesture he’s had since he was a child. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks it means or does.

“Happy cat,” Harry mumbles nonsensically when Tom presses his nose into his mess of hair that smell of Tom’s shampoo. Tom has no idea what he’s on about. The shared warmth of their bodies under the sheets and afterglow slowly pulls Tom under.

But not before Tom can press his face to Harry’s head and silently mourn for the disfigurement of Harry’s skin... that is also _Tom’s skin_.

Because Harry is the only person in the world that is Tom’s, a piece of Tom outside himself Tom thought he’d never find in a universe full of insignificant strangers. That is Harry Potter to Tom Riddle.

Harry is Tom and Tom will never let a part of himself be taken from him. He will keep Harry or destroy everyone else for stealing him away. And if Harry learns Tom is one of the same criminals Harry hates and willingly leaves him?

Well, it won’t come to that. Tom would never disappoint Harry with the truth, like the fact there’s a broken glass murder weapon sitting in a sock in the trunk of Tom’s car he’s yet to properly dispose of.

He’ll get to it in the morning.

Tom does not.

After Harry drives off to work, the bottle shard gets tucked away with all the other small trinkets Tom has steadfastly collected over the years, right next to the ring with the broken stone. The shattered bottleneck will be his new keepsake from the first murder Tom has committed since living with Harry, almost a year now. If the world is out to damage his sole person of value, it shall not be the last he collects for Harry.

And he will likely collect more for reasons not him. Aside from Harry, a single thing exists that Tom cannot readily resist. And that is snagging a choice object from the possession of the recent corpse he’s created. When someone has something he wants, it’s a matter of whether it’s worth getting it or not. With dead bodies, the answer is always an easy yes. Those objects will be in hands that value it more than the human lives it previously belonged, or even _wrongly_ belonged to.

His mother’s locket would know.

He doesn’t do it as a memento for his crimes or even a trophy as a testament to victory; that is a bonus. What Tom experiences is simply the compulsion to take a small object from his target that first caught his eye or, rarer, was the significant reason for killing them in the first place.

Stealing isn’t something he has to actively think about doing or not, but more an instinct to start thinking about _how_ he can. And he’s good at it. He must be after needing to use it since his first conscious introduction to the world. Anything extra beyond the bare minimum to survive and be civilized was a luxury, that wasn’t given to him without Tom’s taking it.

As a child, he was often labeled ‘kleptomaniac’ by the occasional professionals that came to visit Wools Orphanage and offer support to the more ‘special cases’ Tom happened to fall under. Tom prefers to call it ‘expanding his property from almost nothing to more’. No one offers the strange child with unfriendly behaviors treats or gifts after all.

Why, it would only encourage him to stay antisocial! No, privileges like pets are reserved for good boys like Billy, who do what they’re told and smile angelically like all little children ought to—until they wail when their lucky rabbit is hung from the rafters and then nobody can. A small price for equality.

But his younger self was hardly concerned with this withholding. Resourceful and self-sufficient at an earlier age than most of his peers, he found ways to get what he wanted if adults wouldn’t do it for him. Mainly lies, manipulation, and of special mention, _intimidation_. The other children and duller adults were fair game.

If honing that skill over years developed into an urge to steal things as insignificant as candy from a baby while an adult, well that is Tom’s discretion to act on or not. Having self-control, he usually doesn’t.

And now his skillset serves him doubly well in his profession as someone well versed in the art of stealing under someone’s nose. It is what got him the cushy job with the Malfoys in fact, as a curator, on paper. An _acquirer_ is a better description.

His own private collection weighs solely in sentimental value, compared to the Malfoys’ millions in ‘investments’ he helps them legally or _otherwise_ obtain.

Abraxas Malfoy’s golden encrusted watch, an item he stole with as much post-consent as one can give to such an act, sits a little away from the rest of his secret possessions. The watch face glinting nostalgically at Tom remains the single item of his favorites that he didn’t murder for. And the only thing he can take out and use without questions.

He used to do the same with the others when he lived alone, leaving them out in the open when he wasn’t stowing them away in a top drawer. But the situation is changed and he’s had to adapt. Tom cannot keep them out for his perusal without risking their discovery in his own home, now that Harry, a policeman, rooms with him.

But living with Harry comes with a few sacrifices that Tom is surprised he doesn’t even mind, including overlooking that Harry’s profession is catching and punishing the likes of Tom. Harry just has that much of strange effect on him.

He locks it up tight. And closes the hatch back up, where it will catch dust until the next time Tom revisits it with a new item. He never knows when that will be.

Tonight, it’s Tom’s turn to make dinner.

Harry arrives with the same boundless energy he typically does when on the trail of something new. Tom can hear it in the way his steps quickly speed through the house and straight to Tom lounging at the small table in the kitchen.

Harry bursts into the room with a stack of papers clutched tightly in hand. His accompanying smile is bright and unbridled with excitement.

“My first murder case!” He grins, waving the file in question proudly.

For anyone who doesn’t know Harry to despise murder, they may consider Harry a little too _happy_ about the prospect of investigating violent deaths. Tom, however, does know and enjoys Harry’s enthusiasm for detective work in the pursuit of justice, though he cannot at all relate. He rather be the one to fool people than waste time chasing after them.

“Hello to you too. And congratulations,” Tom greets him, setting down the Daily Prophet, a newspaper which Harry eyes pass over with complete disinterest. It’s unfortunate for the publication of which Harry is somewhat of an icon in the criminal justice community, that their idol hates it and will never cooperate with it for new interviews, not after their last went quite disastrously run by that terrible reporter.

“Tonight’s Carbonara,” Tom nods to the pots still hot on the stove. Considering it’s the quite the momentous occasion for Harry, maybe he should also make a dessert.

Harry offers him a rushed but honest “Thanks” and then he’s heaping a huge mountain of pasta on his plate as he spouts off his latest challenge to solve.

“There was a body found in an alley, an attack nearby a pub. Looks like a glassing.”

Tom keeps himself calm. There’s still a chance it isn’t _his_.

Before Harry’s injury, Tom only ever heard of glassing and thought it a stupid way to wound someone when there was so much more effective means that don’t also cut up your own hand. He’s revisited that opinion after using it himself just yesterday. It has its merits.

Still, he doesn’t like Harry talking about it, given his history on the receiving end with it recently. But for Harry’s eagerness, this clearly isn’t an issue.

“Where was it?” Tom keeps his voice even.

“Down by the Hasbine’s.”

Tom knows exactly where that is, because he’s just been there.

“They just found him in the morning,” Harry’s says casually, oblivious to his words’ effects on Tom. “Seems he died around the afternoon yesterday.”

Tom leans forward curiously, burning to know what Harry thinks of it. “What else do you know?”

Harry goes over the scene, the identity of the victim and the window of the attack, and the likely suspects, which is… not much at the moment.

And during all this, Tom realizes Harry doesn’t recognize the man at all for being his attacker. This information he receives with both relief and oddly, _disappointment_.

Like there’s a hungry part of Tom that wants Harry to know.

“We’ve thinking the motive is personal. There was hardly any of him left that wasn’t scratched up.” It had been seven stabs for seven stitches. Tom got creative with drawing with the glass when he was done, still a little angry and a lot bored.

“His right hand got the worst of it.” That’s the hand that gripped the bottle to swing at Tom and hit Harry instead and where Tom vented most of his anger.

“Odd,” Tom says, looking over the picture of the crime scene distractedly. Harry knows Tom is hard to disgust with such things, but he’s mistaken it for Tom having a high tolerance of violence rather than intimate familiarity with it.

He pushes back the file in Harry’s direction, seeing the telltale twitches in Harry’s hand to look over it again. Harry takes it and resumes reading— _rereading_ probably—over the case notes, while inhaling his pasta haphazardly. How he manages not to get it on the papers is both amazing and tempting fate.

”Body left to be found like that... If I didn’t know any better,” Harry mumbles after a minute, eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully, “the assailant has a lot they want to say.”

Something sinks and settles deep in his stomach, with Harry next to him pouring over the case of a dead man Tom put there—the bastard that hurt Harry. Now he is eliminated and dead-on Proof Tom doesn’t let anyone stay alive who would threaten Harry. And London has one less degenerate for Harry to worry about catching.

This is Tom’s way of protecting him after he’s been hurt. This is his rectifying a wrong and now Harry is looking over his handiwork, naïve and unknowing, but seeing and memorizing all the same. 

His eyes are soaking in what Tom has done for him. How he avenges Harry. It’s a little dangerous how good and close to the edge it makes Tom feel.

Even if he doesn’t know it is Tom he’s looking for, or why Tom did it—for him, or who that victim was in relation to himself, it is enough for that starving hole inside of Tom that craves Harry’s recognition to awaken. It worsens as Harry smiles when he looks up at Tom, elated at Harry being happy with him AND viewing a product at his best worst, even if the two states of Harry have nothing to do with each other, because he’ll never correlate the latter, murder, with Tom.

He points to the grizzly image, not at the broken fingers on the hand but the torn up forehead with an injury exactly where Harry’s is, only much worse. “You’re right, It could be a message.” Tom says thoughtfully, voice suppressing the fervor that begs to be let out.

There are more words he won’t say. But they still drip from his mind like a seductive hymn and out his gaze on Harry’s looking down in front of him.

_Look Harry. Look._

_Closer. Closely. Right there._

_Isn’t it great?_

“Pretty terrible one,” Harry’s mutters, eyes following his fingers to pass over the details of Tom’s work, Tom’s way of making things right and punishing those who hurt Harry and, by extension, Tom. 

A gift Tom hasn’t even known he wanted to give until it was received. He thinks he finally understands how giving to someone else can be rewarding to one’s self if it is always like this. But it has to be someone special. He can’t look away from Harry’s intent stare and furrowed eyebrows, contemplatively twisting his mouth as he tries to figure it out— _Tom_ out.

Tom’s carefully crafted wall of self-control is crumbling.

_Look at what I did for you._

_Do you see it?_

The picture of Tom’s kill that gave Harry an injury is at Harry’s fingertips. It’s too good not to focus on how dead he is and how alive Harry is. As it rightfully should be.

_Look at what I do for what is mine._  
_Can you tell?_  
_That’s what you are,_  
_Mine._

_And I protect what’s mine_.

He’s pleased, sated, and yet something undeniably hungry for more is quickening it’s pace. A pulse in his teeth, hunting for the forbidden fulfillment of recognition. The darkness that wants so badly for Harry to know. Not just to see it’s creations, but to really know who the whole of Tom is by what he is capable of.

 _Would Harry be scared?_ The thought makes him too hot and bothered. He needs to reign it in. Because a scared Harry would no longer want to be Tom’s.

And as always the appetite for Harry’s acknowledging Tom’s true self is outweighed by his greater need for Harry’s acceptance. Which is more important and what he already has from Harry, only because he successfully withholds himself. And he won’t stop now.

Harry’s close call with death has already made it clear he can’t afford to lose him. And Tom already killed for him, his Harry who stepped in front of an attacker for him. Tom won’t do or reveal anything that will lose him.

It’s this promise that slowly recedes his need to a manageable level.

But still one demented whisper carries on, with an unrelenting demand.

_Look at me, Harry._

And he does. Harry looks up, gaze surprised and trapped in Tom’s wake. Then his pupils darken just like Tom’s. He knows it as much as Harry does in that moment, as the papers slowly slip from Harry’s fingers…

Those green eyes would watch Tom fuck him now. 

And own him.

But they tear themselves away like their owner hasn’t just felt Tom’s desire for him overflowing, like it isn’t inevitable in a few minutes he will be tucked beneath Tom, and accepting him. Deeper. And deeper. 

Where no one and nothing can hurt him but Tom, pleasurably. And where Tom, only Tom can kill Harry if Harry has to die. But he won’t. 

Tom will be careful. Tom will keep it hidden to keep Harry safe, ignorant, and blissful.

He will protect Harry from himself.

Then Tom can forever keep him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tom is already crazy in the killing way but Harry makes him experience a new kind of possessive insanity, just one of Harry's many 'strange effects' on Tom. Wonder what Tom's influence is on Harry...


End file.
